The

Attributes of God

Volume 2

Deeper Into the Father’s Heart

by

A. W. Tozer

© 1997 by Zur Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tozer, A. W.,

Attributes of God Volume 2 / A. W. Tozer.

978-1-60066-138-9

Introduction

God’s Character

And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee. (Psalm 9:10)

In the messages that follow we will consider that which is behind all things. There could be no more central or important theme. If you trace effect back to cause and that cause back to another cause and so on, back through the long dim corridors of the past until you come to the primordial atom out of which all things were made, you will find the One who made them—you’ll find God.

Behind all previous matter, all life, all law, all space and all time, there is God. God gives to human life its only significance; there isn’t any other apart from Him. If you take the concept of God out of the human mind there is no other reason for being among the living. We are, as Tennyson said, like “sheep or goats/ That nourish a blind life within the brain.”1 And we might as well die as sheep unless we have God in our thoughts.

God is the source of all law and morality and goodness, the One that you must believe in before you can deny Him, the One who is the Word and the One that enables us to speak. I’m sure you will see immediately that in attempting a series of messages about the attributes of God we run into that which is difficult above all things.

The famous preacher Sam Jones (who was a Billy Sunday before Billy Sunday’s time) said that when the average preacher takes a text it reminds him of an insect trying to carry a bale of cotton. And when I take my text and try to talk about God I feel like that insect; only God can help me.

John Milton started to write a book on the fall of man and his restoration through Jesus Christ our Lord. He was to call his book Paradise Lost. But before he dared to write it, he prayed a prayer that I want to pray as well. He prayed to the Spirit and he said, “And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer/ Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,/ Instruct me.”2

I’d like to say, with no attempt at morbid humility, that without a pure heart and a surrendered mind, no man can preach worthily about God and no man can hear worthily. No man can hear these things unless God touches him and illuminates him. And so Milton said, “Instruct me, for Thou know’st;… What in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support;/ That to the highth of this great Argument/ I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,/ And justifie the wayes of God to men.”3

Who can speak about the attributes of God—His self-existence, His omniscience, His omnipotence, His transcendence and so on—who can do that and do it worthily? Who is capable of anything like that? I’m not. So I only have this one hope: As the poor little donkey rebuked the madness of the prophet and as the rooster crowed one night to arouse the apostle and bring him to repentance, ...